Sunday, 30 October 2016

Look and Read was a schools educational daytime TV show that featured segmented dramas such as; The Boy from Space as well as helping the young viewers to read more confidentially. To the best of my knowledge the show ran for years and I certainly remember watching some episode, if not this particular one.

The Boy from Space is something of a cult viewing experience over here in Blightly, and having watched it today, I can see why. I will certainly be digging down into the shows many wonders although over on my Strange England blog, where it truly belongs.

For now though, I'll present this rather nifty spacesuit that appears in episode one, in the linking bits between the drama.

I'm fairly certain that helmet was in Doctor Who - The Invisible Enemy (1979) first, then The Innes book of Records (1979). After that at least one of them got a coat of silver paint before popping up inBlake's 7 - Voices from the Past (1979), Look and Read the following year and eventually, possibly Dr Who - Terminus (1983). What's the betting there are a couple more BBC appearances in between.

When malfunctions aboard a commercial vessel force a change of course to the remote asteroid colony Somnus, the crew soon discover the inhabitants of Somnus have a dark past and troubling plans for the future of mankind.

Another Ladybird Book showing us what the future was going to look like just a few years before it happened for real. Beautiful art by B. H. Robinson from this 1967 book.

Ladybird was a very important part of British culture, and I doubt there was a kid growing up through the 60's and 70's that didn't own a few or at least borrowed them from the library to do some homework for school. I've recently treated myself to a copy of the above from the local Oxfam store and added to it with the Television one from the same 'How it Works' series. The technology for both has moved on a bit since then but I'm not sure the quality of the illustrations can be bettered.

And we all trusted what Ladybird showed us so if they said we would by circling round the moon for fun then I for one believed them. Of course I used to think I would be the kid up front but I realise now that I'm to be the dad at the back.

Wednesday, 19 October 2016

Which featured a Men into Space helmet & suit and four other unknown space helmets. I suggested at the time that such items were too expensive for such a cheap show to manufacture themselves, therefore they would have been from somewhere else. Well the mystery was solved quite quickly when blog followers; John Nowak came up with the answer, and the ever reliable Tim Armstrong gave his agreement. So, until such times as we track down more of them, I present to you the first recycling of the 1965 to 1968 Lost in Space, Jupiter 2 space helmets.

1968 to 1984 is a lot of years so where else did they pop up?

Two were sold at auction in new colours so they've definitely been somewhere else in between times. Lets go track them down and report back here with our findings.

Tuesday, 4 October 2016

From the second series of Blake's 7, episode 7; Killer, are featured these ill considered outfits. If I remember correctly - I worked through the box sets a couple of years back - these are not spacesuits but rather protective outfits worn by a Federation boarding party.

Now I'm not going to tell you they look like this fella...

...because that's sort of obvious but I might mention that they look very similar to these suits...

..from Come back Mrs Noah, (1978) blogged all the way back in December 2010.

Monday, 3 October 2016

Passengers is an upcoming 2016 sci-fi thriller written by Jon Spaihts and directed by Morten Tyldum. The film stars Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt and should be out and about for a good viewing at the end of the year..... And it looks sort of interesting.

Sunday, 2 October 2016

There's two suits from this Salvage 1 two part story; The Golden Orbit. There's the usual Vulture crew outfits as seen in a previous blog post and there is also that old favourite, the Men Into Space helmet and suit combo which has just been everywhere.

Images are not the best but good enough to recognise what we're looking at. I watched a few episodes back in the day but nothing really ever stuck in the memory. Not a bad show it just didn't really have many directions to go in.